Errm....a jury acquitted him of the vehicular homicide charges. So no, he did not kill the kids. Here's the thing: the crash occurred in his lane and there was no evidence of his car swerving from one lane to the other, as the kids said he did. Sorry, but that kind of tells me that the kids may indeed have been fucking around and screwed up.

I was a teenager once and did really stupid shit with my car right after I got my license. A friend of mine and I once "raced" up Central on a Saturday night (her behind me) and she decided she wanted to pass me and cut me off. Problem was that she didn't have the driving experience to predict what her car was going to do once she gave it the gas and she and her car jumped the median, went for a distance in the oncoming lanes of traffic and then she jumped the median again and came to rest on Maple over there by the Copper Lounge. Fortunately, there was no traffic around at the time, so we escaped unscathed, except her car had four flattened tires. We called her dad and lied our asses off as to the cause of the incident. So yeah, teenagers can and do lie. Particularly when they think the consequences will be dire.

okay, I'm off my angry high horse. I was also young & extremely stupid in my time & am lucky to even be here. I don't doubt the jury's decision & looked at the evidence & had to "technically" agree. I just can't help but feel for the parents & that pain clouds my vision.

I believe it is fact that being over a .16 when driving (2x the legal limit in NM) leads to poor judgement and poor reaction time. I saw that at least one eyewitness said the accused didn't even check on the victims conditions before trying to unload a motorcycle from his truck to flee the scene. To top it off this admitted drunk driver thought he was headed the other way.

There is no excuse now for driving drunk. We have to stop this behavior from happening, but how I don't know

Seems to me that everyone involved in this crash was a victim. Some people hear "drunk driver!" and automatically assume all blame goes to the drunk driver. Not so. Now, did he make a mistake driving drunk? You bet. He served nearly two years in jail--more than if he'd been convicted of the DWI. Let's hope this sad accident causes him to swear off drinking and driving for the rest of his life.

Also, your facts are bit skewed. Dude was driving a Jeep and if you see the aftermath pictures, it's pretty impossible to imagine him a)getting out and b)being able to extract a motorcycle that wouldn't even fit in the thing to "flee." I also don't know where you get your facts about him stating he didn't know which way he was going. Is it possible that he was a bit confused after hitting a car head-on? I have talked to people after car crashes and they are often really confused and not quite sure about what happened--and yes, that includes what direction they or the car that hit them were heading.

Besides describing the carnage at the crash scene, McReynolds' 911 call, played in court Tuesday, also gave police dispatchers the first glimpse of Owens' actions immediately after the crash. When asked to check on the driver of the Jeep, McReynolds obliged. "He's struggling to put his pants on," McReynolds told a dispatcher. It is unclear why Owens' pants were off. "He sounds pretty drunk or out of it," McReynolds added. "I have no idea."